


Fear of Fiction

by lazyychan (ciipherdrabbles), orphan_account



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Horror, horror movie, movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 21:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21083654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciipherdrabbles/pseuds/lazyychan, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Spinel watches a movie Steven had laying around while he's gone on a sleepover to Homeworld. A spooky movie. Near Spooky-tober. It gets spooky for Spinel.Now with 20 percent more ending!





	Fear of Fiction

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked this oneshot!

Spinel found it pretty boring to wait for Steven while he was out at Horror Club with Sadie, Lars, and Ronaldo. She watched Steven adjust his pink letterman jacket over his shirt depicting a horror movie he had watched. She’d get so bored she’d just sit outside the front door of Steven’s house, play his video games, watch TV, or anything that involved staying close to the house. The pink gem was far too scared to leave into town on her own.

“Hey Spinel,” Steven asked, catching Spinel’s attention, “we’re going to Horror Club, and I thought maybe you’d like to come with us?"

Spinel’s eyes lit up at the opportunity. “Y-Ya mean it?!” She hopped onto her feet, making a loud squeak noise.

“Yeah! It’s Halloween season, so I thought maybe you’d like the occasion?” Steven took Spinel’s hand as they walked downstairs, out the door, and to the lighthouse, which wasn’t that short a walk.

Quickly responding to a knock at the lighthouse door was Sadie, wearing a t-shirt with a bloodstained hockey mask and her blonde hair still dyed green near the bottom.

“Oh! Steven, you’re here! Who’s your friend?”

“This? This is Spinel. She’s another gem friend. I thought she’d wanna try watching a horror movie.”

“She’s never seen one before?”

“Well, movies aren’t exactly a thing on Homeworld…”

Sadie gave Spinel a friendly smile as she shook Spinel’s hand. “I don’t think we’ve properly met. Name’s Sadie.”

Spinel relaxed at the sudden gesture, but knew it was just a common Earth greeting. “Uhhh… nice to meetcha! I remember you from that concert when that biopoison drill came in…”

Sadie shrugged. “Hey, no hard feelings. I think a lot of us are pretty used to Steven’s old enemies being more friendly. Anyways, c’mon in! Lars and Ronaldo were waiting on you.”

The two followed Sadie into the darkened lighthouse, the only light sources being Halloween-themed green-colored lamps. Ronaldo and Lars were chilling on the couch in front of the TV, with the former of the two wearing a Frankenstein costume, including a choker with stitched-on bolts on the sides and a Frankenstein head hat, of which was small enough to be placed on his head and didn’t suppress his golden hair. Lars was just wearing the most metal clothes he had, including the skull gauges in his ears.

"Alright! Now that everyone who knows about this club is present," Ronaldo stood up from the couch, walking in front of the TV. "Let's start! Today's movie is a cult classic. Scram!"

Ronaldo held up a DVD box with the word 'Scram' at the top, in bloody letters. The main antagonist was below the title, holding his signature weapon, a sickle. It reminded Spinel of the rejuvenator. 

Ronaldo bent down to put the disk into the player, and powered it on. He stood back up and walked to the side of the TV, pressing the 'On' button. 

"It seems that.." Ronaldo looked back at the group of 4 on the couch. "The TV isn't working tonight."

"How does electricity even get up here, anyway?" Lars asked. Ronaldo shrugged.

"I guess we can just talk about movies, right?" Sadie suggested. Ronaldo turned to the filing cabinet by the door. 

"Or," he said, grabbing a few folders from the cabinet, "we could theorize!"

"Ronaldo, I thought you were over that," Steven said, leaning back. "you did stop coming to my house and asking me about the Gems, like, a year ago. "

Ronaldo pointed to Steven, laughing valiantly, "That's because I found a better source!"

"Why wasn't Steven a good enough source?" Spinel asked, scratching her chin.

"He's sixteen, not like, ten thousand years old!" Ronaldo replied, making gestures with his hands. "I was at the supermarket one day when this Gem crashed in through the window! It was so cool! But then the manager came over and threatened to take legal action if she didn't work at the store to pay it off. I saw her the next day and I said hi! We really hit it off!"

Sadie rolled her eyes. "Ronaldo, we all know you broke the window cuz of that mop incident. Something about a bottle of cleaning spray, a mop, and seeing a few Gems out the window, and you tried to get a good photo of them."

"Nuh-uh! Did not!"

Everyone wasn't annoyed by Ronaldo's tall tales, but wasn't completely pleased by them.

Spinel found herself lost in a maze of conversation, turning every which way in paths she didn't quite understand. 

Steven noticed the confused and lost expression on her face, so he tried to change the subject, for her sake, and for Ronaldo and Sadie's, as they were starting to get a little heated in their argument.

"Uhh… anyways, Ronaldo, did you get that shipment of foreign horror movies?"

Ronaldo quickly tore away his focus on the argument. "Oh yeah! Japan import. They make the best horror movies to date!"

"Yeah, to you." Lars said in a joking tone.

"Woah, you got that one about the slit-mouth lady?" Sadie said, getting up to look at a DVD in Ronaldo's hand. "Yep! It's really hard to find these copies on this side of the world, but I managed to pull a few strings."

"Didn't we just buy them on Tbay?" Lars said with a smirk. He had learned to play it cool and act with more empathy over the course of his adventures on the Sun Incinerator.

Ronaldo just facepalmed in embarrassment as Sadie took the DVD case from his hand.

"Steven, look! They've got the subtitles with that one typo!"

"No way!"

"Yas way!"

Spinel peeked over Steven's shoulder to look at the DVD cover, placing her hand on the opposite shoulder. She gripped it tightly by instinct upon seeing the pale woman with dark black straight hair and red bloody slits on the corners of her mouth. She'd never seen anything that bloody and terrifying.

"W-What's that red stuff…?" Spinel stammered nervously, her hand trembling on her shoulder.

"Uhhh… it's blood. It's what keeps us humans alive other than our organs."

Seeing all the DVD covers Ronaldo showed the other three sent chills down Spinel's spine. She tried to stick around and be brave for her friend, but she eventually started cracking.

Seeing a girl on a DVD cover with vines coming out of every hole in her face startled her greatly, causing her to run and hide when Steven wasn't looking.

She trembled and shook behind the wall near the door leading to other floors of the lighthouse.

However, she was eventually snapped out of it when she heard the sound of footsteps coming nearby. She stayed silent as she thought maybe someone scary was coming for her.

"Steven, I wanted to lend you this old movie. It's about this guy that gets possessed by a ghost and becomes a serial killer."

"Woah! I've heard of this one on those forums Ronaldo posts his reviews to!"

A movie?

That's it!

If it was being lent to Steven, and he had a working TV, she could watch the movie and prove to Steven and herself that these human films weren't scary at all to a gem like her!

She just wanted to make Steven proud.

After the two walked off, Spinel slowly rejoined the group, her plan in mind as she waited for the club session to end to see where Steven would put the DVD.

The next few days were spent with Spinel constantly in the beach house, waiting for the perfect moment to watch it. Steven did leave, multiple times, but Spinel was careful enough to wait at least an hour just to see if he would come back. Which he almost always did.  
But today, Steven was going to Homeworld for a monthly meeting. At first he had it weekly, then bi-weekly, but he couldn't fit either of those into his schedule. He just decided on being gone for the day and returning the next afternoon to evening once a month.

It was perfect. All Spinel had to do was pop the DVD into his primitive Earth device and watch.

* * *

The movie started off fine enough. Spinel had seated herself comfortably on Steven’s bed with all the lights off. She and Steven played games all the time on his TV with the lights off.

The protagonist, Mike Michaelson, was a regular working-class man with a wife and teenage daughter. The house he and his family had just moved into was previously a murder scene of a crazed serial killer who killed himself inside the house when it was surrounded by police.

‘This is scary?’ Spinel thought to herself, ‘This is just a normal movie.’

Suddenly, the movie showed a vase falling off a shelf all by itself.

A kitchen drawer slowly being opened.

Spinel sat up straight seeing this scene play out.

All of a sudden, knives shot out from the open drawer and pinned the protagonist to the wall, the knives piercing his clothing.

This made Spinel jump a bit. Ghosts could do that?

The pink gem was now more alert of the happenings of the movie, and her posture had gone from casual slouching to sitting up completely straight.

How could it get any scarier than that?

* * *

‘Kill them. You know you want to. You know you can.’

The ghost’s creepy voice speaking to the protagonist was enough to make Spinel start clenching the blanket, starting to tremble.

Everything since the knife scene had gotten progressively scarier. Messages in blood on the wall, a knife found jabbed into a photo of his wife, and a decaying corpse found hidden under the bed, of which the protagonist quickly buried in the backyard so no one would believe him to have hidden a body that he never even killed.

‘No! Shut up! You’re not real! I’m just hearing things!’

‘You know that’s not true.’

‘Those ‘ghosts’.... They ain’t real, right…?!’ Spinel thought to herself, and decided maybe she’d feel a little safer under the covers.

* * *

‘Honey, what are you doing with that? Honey… STOP IT! WAIT! NO!’

The screams of the actress made Spinel almost blind her face with the blanket she was curled up under. She laid close to the foot of the bed, all but her face obscured by the soft blanket.

The blood spraying across the screen made the pink gem’s voice squeak, pulling the blanket tighter around herself. She so badly wanted to look away.

No.

Steven would be so proud of her for going through a scary movie all on her own.

She had to keep watching.

No matter how terrified she was of the gruesome scene following of the killer gutting his former wife.

* * *

The poor gem was just about at her limit.

The movie had progressed, with the protagonist planning to go after his daughter after being pushed to his mental limit by the ghost haunting him. She was at a big sleepover, sleeping in the basement, and her father was coming for her.

Loud screams of the various teens getting slaughtered by the killer’s arsenal made the pink gem tremble, splatters of blood sent shivers down her nonexistent spine.

Finally, the climax of the movie was about to hit. The daughter had caught on that there was a killer in the house and hid in a broom closet in the basement. She found it to be quiet and safe…

… until a chainsaw pierced through the door, the sudden moment making Spinel scream.

She screamed again when the killer finally stabbed the running chainsaw into his daughter, and the ending of the movie where the killer ended his own life when the police finally arrived, and when a new family moved in, a knife floated from an open kitchen drawer.

* * *

“Uhh… Spinel?”

Steven saw the gem quivering under his blanket in the darkened room. He turned a bedside lamp on so there was some light in the room.

"Steven!" Spinel shot up from under the blankets with a weak smile. She looked pained. "You're early!"

"It's 10AM," Steven said, dropping his bag by the TV. He walked over to the bed and sat on the edge, opposite to Spinel. "What happened?"

Spinel felt embarrassed. She hadn't been able to handle the movie, and now she was showing her weakness. Not that she didn't have other weaknesses, but she felt pathetic being scared of Earth media. She was a Gem, and Gems used to be the conquerors of entire galaxies. It was like the human fear of spiders, they're tiny and insignificant, but humans are still afraid. 

"I watched that movie you came back with a few days ago," she said, placing her hands in her lap. "I wasn't strong enough to handle it."

"Oh," was all he said. 

"I know, right!" the pink Gem laughed, closing her hands into fists. "I'm a weakling! I'm probably defective, that's what! A scaredy Gem!"

Steven tensed up, and stared at her for a moment before crawling onto the bed, closer to Spinel. Spinel scooted back until she hit the wall. 

"Spinel, you know that's not true," he said, continuing to crawl closer. He stopped and sat cross-legged a few feet away from Spinel.

"What if it happens in real life?" Spinel said, jumping over to grab Steven's shoulders, "What if you get hurt? We all know you probably wouldn't survive if you got hurt like… that!"

Spinel moved back and covered her eyes. In her mind, she could see the last events of the movie. She cowered in fear as Steven processed what she had just said.

"Spinel, I have healing spit!" he said, and Spinel moved her hands from her eyes to look at him, confused. 

"Steven, you don't understand! You wouldn't survive a chainsaw going through you, even with healing spit!" Spinel felt tears bursting from her eyes, and she turned away from Steven. "I read some books on human biology a while ago. And when I thought about it, I realized it would be just like the movie! You'd be immobilized, you wouldn't have time to use your healing spit!"

Spinel tensed as she felt a pair of arms wrap around her midsection, and then the rest of the body meeting her back. 

"Spinel, that wouldn't happen," Steven whispered, "I know you'd protect me if there was a chainsaw-wielding serial killer around."

Spinel chuckled and twisted her body around to face Steven. He shifted his arms from her midsection to her shoulders as they faced each other. 

"It is a bit funny," Spinel said. She tried to hide her blush with her hands, but it still showed through. "I'm not sure why I'm scared of something like that. It sounds so ridiculous."

"Anyone would be scared of something like that. Pearl always worries about my safety too, but I know she and the other Crystal Gems are there to help." He placed a hand over one of hers. "And I would be more than happy to protect you from something scary like that too."

The gentle warmth and soft texture of Steven's hand made the pink gem feel more at ease, a tiny smile creeping onto her face. Steven felt better already by seeing her innocent smile.

He got under the covers and gestured for Spinel to come closer to him. She complied and sat next to him. 

The hybrid boy leaned in to kiss the black tear scars on her cheeks and gently positioned her head to his chest. He knew finding an online sound of a heartbeat helped him calm down sometimes, so perhaps this wouldn't be any different for her.

He immediately felt her relax, but she tightly gripped his shirt and her face was flushed red. She felt calmed at the sound of his heart, but… a kiss? What was happening?

"You feeling any better?" Steven asked, keeping his voice soft and calm as the tiny pattering of rain hit the windows, the sky coated in a soft, almost comforting grey color.

"... Yas…" Spinel said nervously, rubbing her face a bit against his chest like an affectionate cat.

Steven chuckled at the display of affection, "That's great." 

They both stayed there for a good while, perfectly content to not say anything. Just listening to the sounds of the rain was more than a thousand words. Sharing a moment like that, together, was easily about 3000.

"So, how'd your meeting go?" Spinel said, smiling up at Steven. 

"Oh, the usual," he said, in a dull tone, "They smothered me until I felt like I was metaphorically suffocating."

"That's good," Spinel said, snickering, "Cuz you're coming back to something even worse!"

"Oh no!" Steven said, in mock horror, "I'll never escape!"

"That's right!" the pink Gem wrapped her arms around Steven several times, giggling. 

The duo listened to the rain hitting the roof of the beach house together until the storm stopped.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, kudos, and criticisms are all appreciated!


End file.
